newsPutin’s atrocities go onto the back-burner as our eyes and ears turn towards a slaughterhouse called Gaza
The poet Wilfred Owen spent part of his 25th birthday in March 1918 in Ripon Cathedral. A few days later, he returned to the Western Front. He was killed just before the Armistice on November 11. The reredos behind the altar in the cathedral’s Chapel of Justice and Peace bears some of his most memorable words – My subject is war/ I mean the truth untold/The Pity War distilled/The Poetry is in the pity. (Picture: Trevor Grundy).
By TREVOR GRUNDY
Ripon, Yorkshire – – – The Russian-Ukraine war is now in its third year.
There are times when we forget that it’s still going on.
The raging war in the Middle East has put the terrible war in Ukraine on the back-burner.
In terms of media coverage, Vladimir Putin’s campaign of brutality and the mass destruction the Russian leader has caused is receiving far less publicity than it did prior to the Israel-Hamas conflict breaking out on October 7, 2023.
Lone and courageous voices remind us as parts of the media embrace a deafening silence.
The CNN’s Arthur Darcy said in an article (November 17, 2023): “The noted drop in Ukraine war coverage from the press, given the fresh violence in the Middle East, is not completely surprising. The horrific acts of violence Hamas carried out in Israel has shocked the world, arresting the attention of those who normally pay little regards to global affairs.”
Essential reading to understand the background to the tragedy that is Ukraine today
The drop in attention paid to Ukraine has been little short of a boon to Putin who has committed so many unspeakable atrocities.
Some journalists, on the orders of their publishers, have squirted ink into the face of the reading listening public and swum away towards the next exciting trouble spot, allowing Putin to let the world concentrate on a fight between Arabs and Jews while he continues destroying Ukraine.
The flags of Ukraine in a glass bowl and those words on a golden screen will never go away.
I think of the living and the dead, the Jews and Arabs, the Russians and the Ukranians and the terrible power of men with guns acting on orders from an unknowable Above.
The Poetry is in the Pity.